Why Women Don't Like to Cry (And Why You Should Start)

Have you ever been told that you’re too emotional? Or do you avoid crying at all costs because you don’t want to look weak? In this week’s episode, Gervase flips this narrative upside down, offering a powerful reframe that reveals why crying is actually a profound act of healing, as well as an opportunity for connection and growth. Listen in as she breaks down the societal indoctrinations and personal barriers that make us resistant to feeling our emotions, as well as the physiological and intuitive benefits of crying, making a case for why embracing your tears is a radical and necessary practice.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why the fear of being "too emotional" is costing us authenticity

• How patriarchy, capitalism, and even feminism condition us to suppress emotions.

• How allowing emotions to flow can deepen our relationships and create a bridge to our intuition

• The physiological benefits of crying, including access to soul-wisdom

• Why creating safe, intentional spaces to feel is key to emotional health

• How women's circles, somatic healing, and working with a trained facilitator can help you access your intuition, soul wisdom, and deeper clarity

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Are you ready to stop suppressing your emotions and start accessing your inner wisdom? Start with a Soul Shift:

• The Soul Shift Intensive was created for the woman who is ready to leave behind the stories society has conditioned her to believe, and instead embrace the calm and clarity that comes with being connected to soul wisdom.

• Check it out here:  https://www.gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/themodernphoenix

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

Why Women Don't Like to Cry (And Why You Should Start)

Episode Full Transcript

Today I want to make a case for crying and give you all the reasons why you may or may not be afraid of your emotions, super resistant to crying, and why it’s actually good for you. Let’s start by talking about the systems. If we think about our culture and society at large, what are the messages that are in the systems—in the water we drink, in the air we breathe?

First, patriarchy. Our internalized patriarchy has made it clear that crying is a sign of weakness and that weakness will not be tolerated—also in men. Reminder: patriarchy doesn’t just negatively impact women; it also negatively impacts men. We’re operating within a system that tells us emotions, feelings, tears are weak.

We’re also in a capitalistic society that values, prioritizes, and glorifies time and money. Crying is a waste of time and crying does not make us money. So what’s the point? Now let’s also look at feminism. With all of the positives it has offered, it’s also put an extra rock in our backpack: we have to be super strong no matter what. It gave us resilience and empowerment to fight the good fight. But what we picked up from that was the message that vulnerability in any form isn’t going to get us where a man goes. We’re trying to play a man’s game. Because we’re in patriarchy, men don’t cry. Feminism reinforced that strong, empowered women don’t cry. It’s helpful to see all the ways we’re conditioned to not feel our feelings.

On top of this, in the micro: you might be in a partnership where your partner feels uncomfortable with your tears. You might be consuming motherhood content that tells you “don’t project your feelings onto your kids; your kids aren’t responsible—tuck that away.” You might have been raised by emotionally repressed parents, which is true for many of us, and so you internalized the message “don’t show your kids any emotion.” Also not to give it back to your parents as a child. Your childhood trauma might literally be to not show emotion because it makes everybody uncomfortable. It’s inconvenient. It’s bad or wrong. Everyone would agree crying in the corporate workplace is frowned upon. We have narratives around “hysterical women,” “emotional women,” “don’t be too sensitive.” This makes sense why women avoid their emotions at all costs. We resist the urge to cry no matter what.

This is maybe a gross parallel, but I had the stomach bug last weekend. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but I noticed: you know when you have to throw up and you know it’s coming but you’re like “no, no, no, I don’t want to,” and you hold off as long as possible—and then your body does the work for you? That’s like crying for most women I work with. They feel the emotion inside them and will do anything to prevent it from coming out in almost any scenario—even feeling deep fear and vulnerability with a loved one. Because of all these factors—add a dash of childhood trauma, pick your cocktail—we’ve been conditioned not to inconvenience others with our feelings, not to feel our feelings, to distrust our feelings, to believe our feelings make us weak, and to keep them in no matter what.

We also live in a society that intellectualizes everything. When you feel emotion, or as you’re feeling it, or after, we’re never noticing “how did that feel to my system? What was that like for my body?” We’re just like, “Why did that happen? What was that about?” We’re always creating a story about the tears. We’re always trying to figure out “why am I crying? Why do I feel sad?” instead of just releasing the pressure valve and allowing ourselves to feel sad.

Let’s talk about what this does to us as women. We know all the reasons why we don’t; let’s talk about why it’s damaging. If we go back to the vomit example: one of my children had the stomach virus at the same time I did. Because they’re young and have less experience managing nausea, they didn’t make it to the toilet on time. When you have all that stuff building up, it needs to come out. But you don’t have a hygienic, disciplined practice. You don’t have practice of doing it in a healthy way, in a healthy place. You throw up in your bed. You throw up in the middle of the classroom. You throw up in the sink. Parents, I know you feel me. If we take this parallel and apply it to our emotions: so many women have the experience of “I have these outbursts, but it’s always at the wrong time—when I’m super triggered, or with my children. It can’t come out in a professional setting.” This makes sense. There’s a reason it’s happening: your body isn’t being given a predictable, reliable outlet to release emotion, so you lose control of it entirely.

Nobody wants to be totally out of control with their emotions. It’s possible to feel your feelings fully without judgment while also feeling a sense of integrity. You knew it was coming. You expected the big collapse after a big high or whatever’s going on. You made space for yourself or you’re working with someone like a professional to hold space for you. You have proper outlets to process it.

Aside from exploding at the wrong time—and I say that with love and compassion because who hasn’t exploded at their kid in the grocery store—we’re also holding in our authentic selves. We’re not giving our loved ones and relationships our best selves because we’re contracting and hiding a part of ourselves to stay safe, to keep it together, to not metaphorically throw up no matter what. Doing that costs us authenticity. Then we wonder why so-and-so doesn’t know us. Well, we haven’t allowed ourselves to be known. We haven’t allowed ourselves to be seen. That hinders connection. It hinders relationships. It hinders repair because one never lets oneself get “out of control” and feel feelings fully. We also miss out on amazing creativity and connecting to and hearing our inner voice.

A lot of the bridge I create for women is the bridge between “here are these external symptoms of feeling like a boiling pot of water” to “what is the wisdom on the other side of that?” There’s a reason we want to do this for our bodies: it creates physiological balance. It releases anxiety, depression, stress. We’ll get into that in a second. But it’s also the bridge to hear your intuition. It’s the bridge to soul wisdom. Every single time I have someone on a session releasing a little emotion, when it’s complete, we access a deeper truth—deep soul wisdom you could never have come up with if you were just talking in talk therapy or intellectualizing. If you do this with a trained facilitator, you’re gently and masterfully guided through your emotion so you can release it in a way that allows your body to release stored trauma and process it in a soulful, intuitive way instead of just from the mind.

Wow—all these things we’re blocking ourselves from by not allowing ourselves to cry, not to mention our healing. We cannot heal what we are unwilling to feel. I know why we’re unwilling to feel it. But what would you do differently if you knew that is the path to healing? You want to heal your childhood trauma? You have to feel your childhood trauma. And it gets to feel your childhood trauma. It does not have to be huge, exhausting, devastating. A trained somatic practitioner will gently guide you through emotion and any trauma the body is storing, releasing the pressure valve, accessing soul wisdom, and starting the healing process in a sustainable, resourcing way. If you’re having explosive releases and then you’re exhausted and there’s no transformation, get curious about that. That doesn’t need to be the way.

Now we know how we’ve been conditioned not to feel, why this hurts us and damages our relationships, what’s on the other side, and how this is the bridge to healing and soul wisdom. I also want to give you a couple benefits of crying. I googled this—I kind of knew it but double checked. Crying releases oxytocin and endorphins, which ease physical and emotional pain. Those are the endorphins that make you feel good and balanced. It lowers cortisol levels—cortisol is the stress hormone. Raise your hand if you’re not stressed. Everyone’s stressed. Modern life is stressful, packed, busy, overwhelming. We need easy ways to reduce stress. Releasing this pressure valve is one of the easiest ways your body knows how to self-soothe, self-regulate, and reduce stress.

It also creates connections. I read something recently—didn’t double fact check—but it said when you are crying and being witnessed, your tear will fall very slowly because the longer it’s visible to the other person, the more empathy and compassion it builds, the more connection between two people. We were designed to be a connected, compassionate, feeling society. Humans, pre-patriarchy, understood community was vital to survival. This is why everybody feels the epidemic of loneliness. One way this plays out, for a complex web of reasons, is lack of vulnerability, lack of being witnessed, lack of witnessing others.

This is why I do women’s circles. Because witnessing, being witnessed, and witnessing each other in your humanity, vulnerability, and power is such a powerful way for your system to feel connected to another system. That feeling of belonging, that feeling of connection cannot be overstated. You can’t buy it. There’s no hack. You just have to be willing—and curious—about being in community and allowing your authentic self to be seen, knowing that tears are medicine and connection points. This is how you build authentic relationships.

Does this mean every time you get into a women’s circle or with friends you need to be crying to create connection? Absolutely not. But if you’re bubbling over with emotion and you go to be with women and you don’t feel it’s okay to share that with the circle, it might be a supportive resource to find circles where that is normal. On my group call today, a couple of women said, “I’m not usually that vulnerable, but I love doing it in the circle.” It’s not always appropriate to be vulnerable and crying in a professional networking event. Nobody’s saying go out into the modern world and start crying. However, your body physiologically needs to release your emotions—anger, sadness, fear, grief, whatever—in a sustainable, healthy, healing way. It’s your job to find the places where that is normal and actually pleasurable, resourcing, and delicious, that also create this web of community—which is probably also the thing you’ve convinced yourself you don’t get to have, but somebody else does. Authentic, connected community happens through vulnerability; via vulnerability comes authenticity. In that space, feelings happen. Humans have lots of feelings. If we’re honest and have a place where we share deeply—“How am I really? Who am I really today?”—emotions may arise.

When you’re in a well-tended container or circle where feelings don’t need to mean anything, you don’t need to intellectualize or get to the root, you know how to resource and support each other, witness and be witnessed, and then let it go and rise in your power. To me this is the most ancient and easy intelligence available. I’m always like, “Where’s the low-hanging fruit? Oh, a good cry? Yeah, I could do that.” Do I have an hour for a class? Not all the time. Sometimes crying is going to be it. Sometimes crying in community. Sometimes crying with a facilitator, guide, healer. Sometimes walking, holding yourself through this process. I’ll share my own experience: I hold myself through waves of emotion all the time now. It’s part of my life—like washing my hair, having a cry, brushing my teeth. My clients can do this too now. Eventually you’re not afraid of the emotion. You don’t feel terrified of yourself and what’s inside lurking beneath the cool, controlled surface. You understand this is a resource—physiologically supportive, with health and mental health benefits, creating community and all these things. It becomes not a big deal. It becomes part of your routine as needed. Tending to the body, accessing soul wisdom.

When I have hard questions I’m trying to get answers to, or when I feel very triggered—all my insecurity and childhood trauma stuff coming up—what do I do? I work through the emotion. I allow it to move through me. I have a ritual for it. At the end, that’s how I hear my soul. That’s how I hear the truest thing I need to hear in that moment—which is not all the thoughts swirling in my head, which is not something logical, which is not what somebody else thinks I should do. Unless you’re my coach or a deeply wise friend I connect with this way, I don’t want somebody else’s advice. I need my own inner voice. I need my own advice. That’s confusing sometimes—how do you get your own advice? You allow the emotions and sensations to move through you and you practice doing this in a healthy, resourcing way. Accessing your own somatic and soul wisdom becomes second nature. It becomes the language you speak. It’s gratifying and satisfying. Nothing makes me feel still and clear like having moved myself through a trigger or wave of emotion, gotten to the other side, listened for the deep inner wisdom, written it down, taken deep breaths, done movement, and gone about my day. I’m like, wow, I feel like a magician. I’m not playing this game. And you don’t have to either. The way you do it doesn’t have to be the way I do it. We live different lives, have different personalities, responsibilities, and gifts. We get to do it the way that makes sense for us. The story we tell ourselves is, “She can do it because X, but I can’t.” I’m letting you know: feeling your feelings is your birthright. Your body was programmed with this when you came into this world. It’s a stress release programmed into you. I can teach you to use it masterfully, gently, sustainably, as a bridge between all the thoughts, obligations, and conditioning swirling in your head and what you really want to know—what you need to solve that problem, have that conversation, keep going one more day. That is the deeply wise counsel you’re only going to get from yourself. If you know how to hold yourself through a good cry, you’ve got you. There’s nothing you can’t do. That is the vibe of the Modern Phoenix, and I want that for every single woman I meet.

If that sounds like a journey you’d like to go on, I’d be honored to support you. We don’t have to cry, but we probably will—let’s be honest. It always makes me chuckle when a woman comes in and says, “I’m not going to cry today. I’m not a crier.” I say, “That’s totally fine.” Then 20 minutes in she starts crying. “This has never happened. I don’t know why.” Considering this has happened to me about 20,000 times, I’m going to go ahead and say it’s not an accident and you’re here for a reason. Your mind knew I was the resource your body needed to make it safe and okay for you to experiment—even just 20 seconds of tearing up. Take what feels too much and make it right size for you. That’s how we work. That’s how any trauma-informed practitioner should and will work.

I would be so honored to support you in a Soul Shift Intensive. We’re no longer selling the Somatic Soul Sessions—that was just a special for January—but I do have spots for private coaching I’ll be talking about until they’re full. Your first step to explore that and see packages I haven’t advertised online yet is to book a 90-minute one-on-one with me. I’ll support you through this process and talk about what it could look like. You have a gut, an instinct, an intuition guiding you all the time. I invite you to trust it, honor it, make it normal, get curious about it, lean into it, explore it, and get to know who you truly are. I love you so much. See you in two weeks.

My mental health story & what therapy couldn’t “fix”

When it’s deeper than talk therapy, it needs a mind-body-soul approach. This week on the Modern Phoenix, Gervase shares insights from her mental health journey turned full-blown personal evolution. Listen in as she opens up about how transitioning from mind-based therapy to soul and body-centered practices like focalizing, somatic healing, and nervous system regulation opened new paths to healing and inner transformation. As she recounts pivotal moments that shaped her understanding of herself, she shares the profound power of trauma responses, intuition, inner child healing, and more, inviting you to look beyond conventional therapy practices and consider your own unique path to healing.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The strengths and limitations of talk therapy that led Gervase to explore mind-body-soul healing

• The role of somatic practices and nervous system regulation in mental health

• What it means to understand and address trauma responses through body awareness

• Why shifting from self-fixing to self-tending is crucial for healing

• The importance of integrating mind, body, and soul in any healing journey

• How to embrace the complexity of healing and look beyond conventional therapy practices

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New to the idea of Mind-Body-Soul integration? Start by dropping into your body wisdom with a Somatic Soul Session:

• For the first time ever, current, past and new clients can enjoy a 60-minute session with Gervase to set intentions for the New Year, get clear and focused when you feel stuck and overwhelmed, or address any persistent problems that keep recurring.

• Get unstuck and tap into your body wisdom. On sale through January. Buy it now, use it any time this year: https://gervasekolmos.podia.com/f1c7c21a-5772-4222-bf65-7bac78672c33/buy 

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

My mental health story & what therapy couldn’t “fix”

Episode Full Transcript

Hello, my loves. I want to invite you to grab a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and join me because I’ve got a cup of tea for a little story. I did a post on Instagram this week talking about my journey of healing. And I mean, the word healing gets thrown around—I don’t even know what that means sometimes. It can be so subjective.

I know that when I am getting to know and like and trust other teachers, guides, and mentors, it’s really important for me to know their story. So when I did this post, I felt inspired to go back down memory lane and even remember my own story of how I got here and why I’m so passionate about mind, body, soul healing and inner transformation. Because I did it first. Because it was the thing that healed me.

I said something like, I healed myself back to wholeness. And I stand by that—it feels true. But we know healing is not linear. It’s a spiral of evolution. That’s why the phoenix is the imagery for this podcast. That’s why I want us all to embody the phoenix: to understand that the idea of “how I healed” is actually a falsity rooted in systems we’re going to talk about today—the idea of arriving. Really, what my journey has taught me is constant evolution.

Some of you might relate to my story of starting in the mind with talk therapy, moving into intuition, spirituality, the soul, inner child healing, shadow work, and then ending in the body with somatic healing, nervous system regulation, and my focalizing training. So, grab your tea, and let’s begin.

I’ve shared parts of this before in masterclasses, but never the entire story in one place. I’ll start where I always start: when I was 18 years old, I walked myself into a therapist’s office. I told her I wanted to heal. I said I was there because I didn’t understand why I felt responsible for everything and everyone, and also like it was never enough. Nothing I did was ever enough.

In therapy at 18, I began to unravel and unpack my family of origin, my ways of coping and relating that I had created as a child. The psyche develops between ages seven and nine, and I had created an entire way of relating to others that left me feeling I was never good enough, that I was carrying the world, that I had to mother everyone, and that I still wasn’t doing a good job. Some of you may relate to that.

I think we all come from childhood with unique wounds. The point is, I started where most people begin: in the mind. I began in therapy. I think everyone could benefit from therapy. I’m a huge advocate for it.

Fast forward: when I was pregnant with my second child—so from age 18 to 32—I had been on and off in therapy, taking breaks but having pivotal moments in my twenties. My brother passed away. I was on and off antidepressants. I was grappling with what I’d call chronic depression, though that’s not technically a diagnosis. I’d feel paralyzed in my mind and body, trapped in negative thoughts. I didn’t know to call them intrusive thoughts. I just thought: I’m sadder than other people, I have a more negative view of myself, I can’t get out of bed.

A friend in college once gently said, “I think you might be depressed.” Between 20 and 30, I had big defining moments—motherhood, loss, breakups, life changes. I was still in the clinical world of therapy, antidepressants, mainstream culture’s identity of wellness and healing. It was great in many ways. I really tackled my mother wound then. My relationship with my mother—no secret—was the biggest thing I wanted to figure out. I’m proud of the work and the internal shifts from that time.

At 30, after having my first child, I discovered life coaching as a career. When I understood coaching was helping people untangle challenges, family dynamics, stuck situations, I thought: oh God, I’ve spent a decade doing that in therapy. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I thought I’d be a therapist or psychiatrist in college, considered majoring in psychology, but I didn’t love school and didn’t want more years of it. Now I see my intuition was guiding me elsewhere.

So, with ten years of therapy experience as a client, realizing those same things made me uniquely qualified to hold space for others, I began life coach certification. Then I got pregnant with my second child and felt that familiar weight of prenatal depression. I had a knowing: what got me here won’t get me there.

Many women come to me from therapy. They say, “Therapy was amazing—we worked on the mind, the stories, the beliefs. But I wasn’t progressing. I was circling the same stories.” That was my experience too. I felt depression again but also felt: there’s more out there.

At this time, I had entered entrepreneurship, joined a mastermind, done a program full of self-help and spirituality, met friends who thought differently, not from mainstream therapy. I connected with a now-dear friend, Cora Poash, a life coach trained in spiritual psychology. My first interaction with her on a retreat was like a meeting with my intuition, a deepening into my soul. Something mystical became tangible. I knew I had to work with her.

So at 32, for the next five years, I went on a journey of the soul and intuition. Spirituality light. I have a rich inner spiritual world, but I also know spirituality can turn people away who actually need it. So listen with discernment: this part of my journey was about the universe, manifesting, soul, spiritual psychology, earth lessons. I dove into a deeper understanding of life, gained a higher perspective, a higher meaning.

The biggest thing happening then was my intuition coming online. The deepest work with Cora was inner child healing, which was so therapeutic. I learned how much I had shamed myself for depression. I saw the ways it was normalized yet still stigmatized for me. I did soul work, intuition work, and asked: what if depression is partly a symptom of paralyzing beliefs? Of disconnection from spirit and intuition? What could I learn from it?

I began creating a next-level relationship with my intuition. It became an obsession because I started seeing evidence—times I zagged when the world said zig, and my life actually made sense when filtered through intuition. The old filter—dominant culture, external metrics—had been causing suffering. Freedom came when I made my inner knowing the authority.

This was radical. Easier to gaslight yourself when using the world’s rules. But once you decide your discernment is the authority over what’s “normal” or what other moms are doing, you feel intoxicating freedom. Of course I had pain before—I was trying to fit into wrong-shaped boxes. But releasing that pressure, I felt lighter, freer, with less inner friction.

At this time I also explored human design. My intuition screamed at me to do a reading. I learned I’m a 5-1 Splenic Projector—20% of the population. My authority is my spleen. I started making the intangible tangible, aligning my life with my energy. Energy is in the realm of soul and spirituality: you feel it but can’t see it.

This second part of my journey was the intangible, the mystical. It made everything make more sense, with or without the spiritual lens. For me, intuition is sometimes interchangeable with God, sometimes its own thing. It doesn’t matter—try it on for yourself. Take what resonates, leave the rest. We’ve been brainwashed to think we must accept entire religions or else it’s flawed. But life is nuanced.

Down the intuitive path I went. But another thing was happening: even as I healed and felt lighter, sometimes I went into trauma responses—fight, flight, freeze, fawn. I got curious about trauma: big T, little t, childhood trauma. I realized my childhood experiences, though not “big” enough to label trauma, still shaped my nervous system.

When faced with failure, financial instability, relational rupture, my body shut down. Freeze: I’d get depressed. Fight: I’d attack. Flight: I’d disappear. Fawn: I’d perform, pretend, abandon myself.

This tied into my sober curiosity journey. Had I been drinking to numb, freeze pain, or to fawn and fit in? Yes. Was it bad? No. But now I saw it. Healing is seeing deeper layers—like more of the Matrix online. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

So even as things improved, I saw my nervous system pattern. I remember one scenario: relational uncertainty with someone, talking it out with my husband, and I went into a panic attack. Hysterically crying, on the floor: why do I feel things so deeply? That’s always been my story. An ocean inside me, painful, scary, big emotions. I thought nobody else felt this way.

Part of me saw maybe this wasn’t balanced. Another part of me saw I was gaslighting myself. It’s actually okay to be emotional.

Then came focalizing—a somatic, nervous-system-based trauma training created by Dr. Pacucci. I trained with Nick Werber and Joanna Miller (both have been on this podcast). I learned about the body, the limbic brain, trauma responses, how trauma stores in the body. In the animal kingdom, trauma organically releases. Humans can too, but conditioning gets in the way.

I dove deep into somatic healing for my big emotional bursts. I also realized I’d been addicted to fixing myself for two decades, convinced I’d solve the riddle of what’s wrong with me and then I’d change forever. Subtle, unconscious, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

I shifted from mind—“Why is this happening? What’s wrong with me?”—to body: “What resource is needed?” I started stabilizing and regulating my nervous system sustainably. At the same time, I was unlearning systems of oppression, strengthening intuition and soul as authority, practicing not making any parts of me bad, incorporating parts work and family constellations.

You can see why I now can’t encourage healing that doesn’t include mind, body, and soul. Where I stand today: I’m still not perfect. I still spiral sometimes. But I have deep safety in my bones. My nervous system feels safe. Because of that, everything else is manageable. Life will keep life-ing. It’s never about perfect conditions. That’s the lie from the mind.

Exclusively solving problems in the mind leads to binaries: good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure, good mom or worst mom. Black-and-white processing. But healing includes nuance, intuition, regulation in the face of chaos.

I also reflect on generational patterns. Have we swung too far in blaming the generation before us and trying to make things perfect for the next? That pursuit of perfection is internalized patriarchy, white supremacy—even in healing.

So it’s complex. It deserves an integrated mind-body-soul approach to get to the place where you feel safe no matter what. Where you can resource yourself, meet discomfort with intention, and try—even if it’s messy.

Many clients realize “trying” is itself a strategy. It’s nuanced. It doesn’t promise outcomes. It just says: I’ll do my best. And the truth is, there’s an intelligence moving through the world creating conditions we can’t control. Each person is responsible for themselves. You can try, but you can’t predict or control their response.

That is the beauty of relationship. That’s why the phoenix inspires me—it’s constant evolution. Ego death after ego death, identity crisis after identity crisis. Parts of you die—parts that gave you validation or value—and you rebirth again.

For me, my identity was being good at fixing. But sometimes things don’t need fixing; they just need tending, love, compassion, safety. I used to picture “digging out the rotten part” of myself. I don’t do that anymore. There’s a gentler way, which has led to less self-shaming, less depression, fewer trauma responses, more authenticity, more trust in myself and my intuition.

I went from vacillating between fight-flight-freeze-fawn to a steadier nervous system. From loud negative mind chatter to: “Oh, that’s programming. That’s your American individualism, your colonizer mindset. That’s your body needing sleep. That’s you trusting someone else over your intuition.” Seeing it clearly.

This has created a beautiful life. Am I “healed”? Probably not. I hope to always have mentors and guides. But I’m always seeking support to see my blind spots, to resource myself, to keep evolving.

If you feel ready for your own inner transformation, I’d be honored to support you. Your first step is to book a Soul Shift Intensive. You can still book a Somatic Soul Session (a 60-minute one-on-one) through the end of January at $299. We can focus on a sticking point, do coaching, somatic healing, visualization—whatever you need.

Remember: dominant culture will tell you there’s no time, that you don’t deserve healing, that it’s selfish or irresponsible financially. As someone who’s prioritized healing for two decades, I can say: the only investments I’ve never regretted are those tending to my mind, body, and soul. They change everything. They give clarity, calm, and control no matter what. Because you know who you are. You know your tendencies, your mind’s patterns, how to tend to your body. You don’t freak out at mistakes or setbacks. You keep building what you want, inside and out.

Knowing yourself, having the resilience to honor her, changes every relationship and your mental health. And I know I could never have gotten here with therapy alone. I needed to go deeper, to tend the roots, prune the old, grow new shoots.

It has been such a gift, a joy, a pleasure. And I’d love to invite you to give it to yourself.

Thanks for sharing tea with me. If you love this podcast or find value in it, please give it a five-star rating on Apple. Share it with a fellow Phoenix going through her unlearning so she can rise. I’ll see you in a couple weeks. Thanks. Bye.

A Mind, Body, Soul Rest for 2025

Navigate the demands of the new year with greater ease, intention, and authenticity. In this week’s grounding episode, Gervase invites you to reflect, reset, and reconnect with the cycles of nature around (and within) you. She explores the effect of the Winter Solstice, our changing assignments for this season, and discusses how aligning with nature’s rhythm can help us navigate the demands of modern life with ease. Gervase shares her insights on living as a “modern woman on an ancient Earth,” and how tapping into the wisdom of your body and soul can unlock a new sense of clarity and coherence. Listen in as she guides you through a grounding exercise, sharing tools to help you slow down, refuel, and return to your life feeling aligned, resourced, and ready to create magic.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The power of seasonal awareness and its impact on your body and mind.

• Why slowing down and resourcing as you go is essential for sustainable energy.

• How to reset your nervous system in the midst of life’s chaos with a simple grounding exercise.

• The role of natural intelligence in guiding your decisions and aligning your inner and outer worlds.

• Why your worthiness is never tied to productivity or societal expectations.

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New! Special Rate: drop into your own unique body wisdom with a Somatic Soul Session:

• For the first time ever, current, past and new clients can enjoy a 60-minute session with Gervase to set intentions for the New Year, get clear and focused when you feel stuck and overwhelmed, or address any persistent problems that keep recurring.

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A Mind, Body, Soul Rest for 2025

Episode Full Transcript

Do you feel what I feel? This podcast is airing on December 30th, I believe. The winter solstice—the longest night of the year—is when the earth in the Northern Hemisphere is the darkest for the longest. It’s December 21st. The earth is getting quiet. It’s getting cold. The animals are resting. The leaves are shedding. Things are dying.

And it would be super off-brand as the Modern Phoenix podcast to not give you a moment to pause and consider this as a human being who lives and operates amidst all of these natural elements. As a human, you are nature. You are part of nature. You are an animal body with a human brain.

I’m wondering if, like me, you have started to notice, as it has gotten colder—if it is getting colder where you live—this animal instinct to slow down, to maybe eat more, to change the way that you eat, to eat warmer foods perhaps. I’ve shared that’s what’s going on for me. To rest, to gather, to be indoors, to be cozy, to be with loved ones. And if you have felt that way, I just want to validate for you: that is because that is the earth’s assignment right now. And if you have not felt that way, that’s okay too. This podcast is for you.

Most of us in the modern world have very few messages telling us to slow down and rest this time of year, very few messages encouraging us to look out the window and notice what is happening to the earth. Instead, we have a lot of messages to buy a bunch of stuff, go out, be social, celebrate, gather. Everything seems to ramp up.

For me, my modern life—especially as a mother—this time of year, I have two birthdays this month in my family. I feel this dissonance. In the past I’ve felt a little like: what am I supposed to do? When I first started understanding this idea that we are cyclical beings, just like the phoenix is a symbol and representation of a cyclical life cycle, I found it really difficult to get out of my mind’s idea that I was just a human doing and into this concept that I was a human being, part of everything, part of nature, with a body that is attuning to things I may not even understand.

I didn’t really understand how to reconcile those two things—how to weave these two things together. I’m a modern woman on an ancient earth. How do we weave these things together?

Today on the podcast, I want to share some practical tips and also give you a reset for the new year. While I often feel like my new-year energy comes in the spring—as flowers start blooming, it gets warmer and brighter outside, and I feel more energy to go outside, do things, have a new beginning—I also think there’s something really beautiful about taking a moment post-holiday to pause and assess: how am I really? What’s working? What’s not working? Have I taken a moment to resource, to ground myself mind, body, and soul? Am I checking in with my mind, body, and soul—especially the body and soul—because a lot of us, in order to keep up with the increased pace of gathering and doing that accompanies modern life in December, just operate exclusively in the mind during this month.

That’s understandable. And also, you’re here to live a more integrated life, to live a more embodied life, to find ways to safely and comfortably and realistically drop out of the mind into the body and soul as often as possible.

That actually reminds me: if you haven’t seen already, I’m doing Somatic Soul Sessions for $2.99 through January. If you want a felt experience of what this could look like, I decided to run a little promo. If you book one of those through the end of January, you can redeem it anytime, and I will guide you out of your mind into your body and soul. We’ll do a little exercise.

But today I want to give you a taste of that for free. I want you to have a resource and a tool to use if you, like so many women, are feeling like: oh my gosh, that was cray-cray. December was bananas. I blinked and it was over. I was holding so many responsibilities in my nervous system. There were so many to-dos. And, you know, if you’re Santa or whatever you celebrate, I just find for myself—especially as a modern mother—I hold a lot of that invisible mental load in my nervous system and don’t even realize I’m holding it.

Even as somebody who has the tools, who is constantly holding herself accountable—and also not even accountable, it’s not like work, but just giving herself permission to pause and resource as I go, which if you are not doing that, reminder: you can—even if you’re not slowing down entirely, you can pause as you go and resource and then get back up. Pause, resource, get back up.

It’s also very helpful to have a tangible tool to use if you’re having trouble with that. If you’re like, okay, it’s cray-cray, I hear what you’re saying, I’m kind of curious about what it could look like to be a cyclical phoenix in my modern life, and also give me some tips—this is for you.

I thought it might be nice to lead you through a short grounding visualization, a focalizing exercise. Just a little something for you to listen to. If you’re driving, do not close your eyes. But if you have some space—as soon as you decide that pausing and resourcing yourself is a priority, it becomes a priority and you find space to do it.

I find my own inner voice, when it has been the most difficult for me to pause and make time for myself and stop spinning my wheels and give my nervous system a reset, the loudest voice is my own. The story I tell myself is that there’s no time and it won’t make that much of a difference.

What I find time and time again—and I have really been experimenting with this so far through December—is there is always time to do the things you believe are a priority. When something is important to me, I make it happen. It’s just about getting our mindset in place. It’s about having the education about the body and the brain and the nervous system that reminds us past the mind stories. It makes it easier to connect to the truth, which is: this is the only way to navigate the most chaotic of times.

Resourcing as you go—tapping into pleasure, peace, and a calmer, more safe feeling in your body and in your nervous system—is the most efficient, effective way to get more done, ironically. If you find that story of: I have to do more, faster, better, or if I haven’t done it all, if I’m not meeting my deadlines, if I’m having to say no more than yes, I want to challenge the idea that it’s because you’re not doing enough fast enough well enough. I offer you an alternative perspective: what if it’s just because you’re not refilling the tank often enough?

What if it’s because you got the wrong message from our culture, that internalized capitalism that tells us do more, faster, more productivity equals more money—and also that sneaky belief tied to it, which is that creates your inherent value, your worth, shows if you’re a good contributing member of society, tells us if you have it all, if you look like you have it all together and you’re doing the most, that is the key to success.

If you hear that and think, that doesn’t feel like me, that doesn’t resonate—I love that. Yes, celebrate that. And also, I invite you to dig a little deeper and check. As somebody who’s been doing this work for 20 years on herself and professionally for 11, I notice even when I think a sneaky seed of the culture hasn’t been planted in my system, I find little roots from time to time, and that’s okay. Some weeds.

For example, I had so much resistance to rescheduling my women’s circle that was supposed to be today—literally right now. I paused and felt this urge to keep momentum, keep going forward, keep achieving my goals, creating more opportunities to connect in business, balancing and doing the birthday party for my son, the holidays, gathering family, keeping the house together, being on in my business all the time.

That is a lie. It’s just not true. And what I am always reminding myself of, which is what I want to remind you of, is that your value is not up for debate. It has nothing to do with your output. The gifts you carry in your soul, what you offer up to your loved ones, has less to do with what you do for them and more to do with who you inherently are—who you are being, who you feel safe enough and comfortable enough to be.

If that is the formula, if that is the metric, it makes it more efficient to lean out of doing more faster better into resourcing, resetting, grounding, connecting, checking in with mind, body, and soul, making sure those things are working together in collaboration, that you feel like you. Your intuition is turned on. You can feel in your felt sense what it is like to be you and how you are connected to the earth and the people that you love and those dreams and things you are building and putting out into the world.

The only thing that has kept me at this podcast game in the entrepreneur world is not making money and being the best. It is just a deep devotion and love in my heart and soul for sharing and doing this work and guiding and coaching. If I turn off my connection to those parts of me and live in my mind doing more, better, faster, I am losing the soul connection—which is where my gifts operate, which allows me to channel wisdom from lived experience versus tons of data and information you can get anywhere.

But guess what? You can only get Gervase and her unique wisdom and her lived experience and her grounded offerings to you—this resetting podcast here. And I can only offer that to you if I have done the work first, if I go first.

In your life, you have your own gifts to share. You don’t have to be in the field of transformation like me. I would argue all of us are in the field of transformation. We came here to create the life our soul wants to live. If you feel that hamster-wheel energy of just doing, it’s a sign—a flag, not necessarily red or scary—that you’ve lost touch with the body and soul. It’s an opportunity to pause and resource and water the plant that is your body and your spirit and ask yourself: how am I really, what do I really need, and am I bold enough to give myself permission to have that, to do that, to pour into myself, to do the thing I really feel to do before I get back on that hamster wheel and continue doing?

Because you will always get back on the horse, back in the saddle, and have at it. That’s what humans do. It’s one of the most exciting things of being alive: creating, achieving, accomplishing, building. We love to do those things. Those things are not bad or wrong. Living from the mind, also not bad or wrong. We just don’t want to do them fragmented from the neck up, disconnected from that motor in our soul that’s like: this way. This is who you are. This is what it feels like to be you. This is where your value and worthiness lie. This is your unique blueprint on planet earth, this one time in history that you will be here as you.

What’s your legacy? What does it feel like for other people to be around you? Not how many presents did you get them, did you dress them in matching outfits, how much money did you make, how skinny are you, what do you look like, how clean is your house—and on and on. How many friends do you have? What is your party like? These things are not inherently bad or wrong. But when those are the only things, it’s just not enough. It feels a little flat.

This is your loving reminder from a very human modern woman to another: when you feel those symptoms of our internalized capitalism, those symptoms of living from the neck up, those symptoms of being disconnected from our beingness and focused on doing more, better, faster—if you feel like you absolutely cannot slow down, that it would cost you way too much to pause, cancel, reschedule, create space—then it is probably you that needs this resetting moment the most, and so many more after it.

It’s not just that you need it. You deserve it. You deserve to feel connected to who you truly are and offer that medicine and wisdom and energy to your loved ones. It is the thing that is going to fill you up and give you so much sustainable energy to go build and love and do and create magic in the world.

When you do more, better, faster from this energetic place where you’re filled from the soul and body up to the mind—like from the roots to the crown—you can create true magic in the world and in your life as you, as the you you’re here to be. With this full cup, with a clear sense of who you are and what your value is, with clear boundaries, clear communication, with a generous open heart instead of a resentful or self-righteous heart or a blaming or shaming or guilty heart or feeling like you have to, or “this is the only way I can show someone”—that is a very normal symptom.

This is another way. If that feels like you, and it feels like a little grounding would support you in your journey of being a modern woman on a Phoenix path—which is confusing, confronting, and changing all the time, every day you will feel and look and be different—then this is for you.

Okay. So let's do a little grounding. Let's do a little reset for 2025 with the intention to care for ourselves and take a deep breath from whatever the pace was of whatever holiday you are coming out of or whatever season December was like for you. And to kind of explore this intention of finding creative, collaborative ways to align our inner worlds with nature's outer world, even for a few minutes to see what it feels like.

So if you're ready and you're not driving and you have some space or if you're walking or something and you want to do this, pause and come back for a short visualization. So just allow your eyes to softly close or you can lower your gaze gently. And just noticing how you are breathing. There is no right or wrong. Just noticing what your breath is doing. And kind of noticing what it feels like. Even just to lower your gaze or shut your eyes. When you turn off one sense or dim it, notice how it heightens all the other senses of hearing, whatever your hands are touching, tasting, smelling. It's almost as if we're turning up the volume on our inner worlds and turning down the volume on the outside world.

And let's just start by observing the mind. Maybe you can just, in your mind's eye, imagine you are encircling your mind, getting a bird's eye view, checking it out, noticing your thoughts. Maybe your mind is going really fast. There's a lot of, this is very uncomfortable. You're distracted. You're not sure if this is worth your time. Or maybe it's clear skies. Blue oceans. Maybe taking in your mind like a topography. Like a weather map. Or a place you love. Just noticing the weather of your mind. No right or wrong. No right or wrong. Just allowing it to be whatever it wants to be. Knowing this is part of the human experience. These busy, wonderful, brilliant brains are always solving problems for us.

And maybe just imagining the mind. And maybe just imagining the mind gently floating up out of your head so that it's just floating above your head. And then inviting it to gently drift across the room. Floating away from the body like a balloon. Taking your time. Just watching that beautiful brain gently float away. And when it's nice and tucked away in a corner somewhere, coming back to the body, curiously, just noticing what it feels like to be you right now.

Maybe feeling your feet and whatever they're touching. Socks or slippers. Hardwood floor. Or rug. Then connecting with your seat, whatever you're sitting on. Maybe even tuning in and feeling what it feels like to have your sits bones sitting in your muscles and tissues, in your skin. Allowing your imagination and your body to work together to complete this picture. All the bones in your body perfectly positioned among tissues, organs, blood, veins, resting perfectly inside your skin.

Taking a moment to just really marvel at all the millions of tiny little adjustments that have to happen for you to have this body operating in harmony with the world that you orient in. Then maybe bringing awareness to your lungs. Noticing the air gently going in and out of the center of your chest. Notice how you're being breathed. Effortlessly. Nature is breathing you.

And then offering a bit of gentle touch by placing your hand on your heart. I just want to invite you to notice what your hand is doing for you. What is it like for you to have your hand holding your heart space? Do you notice any felt sensations in the body? Any colors? Any images? Totally fine if not. And you may begin to notice that some images begin to come into your mind's eye. And we just want to signal the soul here and let her know that you're listening. You know that nothing is an accident when the soul shows you something. Everything is a metaphor or a symbol or a message from the deepest part of yourself.

So what does she want you to know? Is it a feeling? Is it a memory? Is it maybe noticing that there's a part of your body that just feels so weary or tired? Maybe there's tension or pain. None of it could ever be bad or wrong. It's all just data. It's all just messaging from your system. From the roots up to the stems. And just noticing what you're being shown or what you're feeling in your felt sense.

And then we're just going to move our awareness to the top of our heads, to our crown chakras. And imagine opening up the crown of our head, our energetic crown to the cosmos, the heavens, the divine, the sky, the moon, the stars. Maybe any angels or guides or well ancestors. Whatever speaks to you. Whatever language feels most true for you and your spiritual beliefs. Just exploring, opening up the crown of your head to this natural intelligence.

There is a natural intelligence that moves through your body. Guiding your breath. Guiding every single part into place. Connecting you to the natural world. And focalizing. And focalizing. We call this source energy. And whether you call it God or spirit or energy, just explore opening up the crown of your head to this natural intelligence. Maybe visualizing it as a beautiful golden light that is pouring into the top of your head and filling your entire body with this replenishing, cleansing energy, with whatever it is that you have lost over the past couple months or weeks.

Just imagine this natural intelligence just pooling and pouring in through the crown of your head. Dripping and flowing through all the parts of your body that are weary, or depleted, or empty, or confused, or lonely, or overwhelmed, or stressed. And just soothing them. Filling them with safety and calming, loving energy. Nourishing you down from your head, down your throat, into each shoulder and arm. Flowing into your fingertips. And back up. Flowing and circulating this beautiful golden energy.

This resourcing. This resourcing. Replenishing energy into your heart space, your lungs. Allowing it to pool in your belly. Especially dropping into your womb space. Filling your female organs with so much light and care. And care. And tenderness. This beautiful natural intelligence just nourishing you, just nourishing you down, down, down into your legs, your feet, your toes. And circulating back up into your body so that you are filled to the brim with a feeling that feels like your authentic self.

Your soul's highest frequency. Maybe you look at this version of you. You feel what it feels like to be her. And you glow. You radiate. With optimism. With optimism. And hope. And peace. And knowing. In this place you have a deep, deep knowing of who you are, really, on the inside, and how important it is for you to bring her to the outside when you come back to your life.

So before we bring this to a landing, just spend the last couple moments feeling what it feels like to be you. To be connected from the inside out. To your soul. To your body. Working together with your beautiful brain. And all your allies on the outside. Everything in your system just humming and purring and circulating with this beautiful golden energy. This resourcing, replenishing, golden intelligence. Available to you at any time.

And when we come back, we're going to bring this energy, this perspective, this vibration to everything that we do. So you can gently begin to come back to the space. Maybe wiggling fingers and toes. Slowly blinking your eyes open. And letting them land on something that feels really calming to look at. Really grounding. And just noticing what it feels like to be you now.

Notice if there's any difference. And if there's no difference at all, that's okay too. Really congratulate yourself. And pat yourself on the back for trying something new. And even if it's not new, give yourself a big high five for deciding this was a worthwhile way to spend some time today.

Whether it took you a long time to get to it or you did it right away, there is a soul part of you who knew that something was missing from your modern life. That not all parts of your system were online. And that if they were, you would be that much more powerful. That much more magnetic. Every choice that you made would be that much more clear and aligned. Every yes you gave would feel that much more generous, and it would be received that way on the other side. Who you were being on the outside would match how you were feeling on the inside.

And that coherence is, oh, that is the high that I think we're all after. And I really want to thank you for giving me a chance to offer that to you today. I know sometimes it can feel like everything goes so fast and there's no time, and nobody else is going to slow down. And if you slow down, you're going to be lost in the fray. And the more we can notice that, that is part of our brainwashing that separates us from our true essence, from the natural intelligence that operates within and around us, that lets us know, you're going to be okay. Just a couple breaths. Just a couple moments.

There's more here to consult. There's wisdom here. There's a felt sense of peace and calm and resource and nourishment available to me. Oh, I don't feel that. Okay. That just reminds me it's time to go inward. And part of being human is forgetting all the time. And part of being a phoenix is reinventing yourself and exploring what it feels like to be you now in this season.

I know for me, this December is very different from my last December. And also I know there are ancestral patterns in my nervous system that resurface every winter. And so we're always tending to all these parts of us and noticing what are these old ancestral patterns or trauma patterns or maladaptive patterns of being in a modern society that I'm ready to just let go of just a little bit more this season.

And so if you're going to let go of it, let's replace it with something really nourishing, really wise, really lasting, that is more you. That stems from this deep, deep knowing of what it feels like to be you on the inside. Of who you truly are. Of the gifts and medicine you have to offer your life, your vision, your loved ones, every choice you make. And let's see how much better it can feel each season. Every time we circle around the Gregorian calendar. Every time we circle around nature's cycles.

I'm always just noticing the shifts in me every winter and going, oh, interesting. So cool. I feel like I'm more me. And also haven't arrived yet. I'm still experimenting and experiencing what it is to be a phoenix in a human body. What a cool earth assignment. Yes please. More please.

Okay. That's it for today. Don't forget to grab your 299 Somatic and Soul Session at the link in the show notes. It's on sale through January because I just like literally love a good sale. And I am like really excited to offer these 60 minute one-on-ones with me. It's a new way of working with me that I'm trying out. And we will do a little bit of what I just gave you, but the intention is to just clarify your vision for the future, connect to your soul, notice what the body is holding, offer some resource, some clarity, some energy, a deeper connection to who you truly are.

So if you want to work with me in that way, would love to connect with you in one of those sessions. And also, like, thank you so much for being here, for being in this community. I would love it if you know another phoenix who could use a post-holiday reset and you would share this with her. We need to make this new paradigm normal, mainstream. We need to make this way of womaning, the phoenix way. We need to make it more acceptable so women everywhere remember who they truly are, their missions, and that they get to feel good.

The pleasure available to us when we live this way, the phoenix way, even when it is crazy, even when we forget, even if we're the only ones. If more of us wake up and remember what it feels like to connect to the soul and the body and become integrated in mind, body and soul, just imagine how much more beautiful we can make the world, our families, our circles that we orient in.

I love you so much. Thank you for being here. And I will see you in two weeks. We'll see you in the next week.

I have to say the right thing or they’ll be mad

In this episode, Gervase shines a light on the pervasive belief: “I have to say or do the right thing, or they’ll be mad.” Gervase explores how this belief can not only trap you in cycles of self-doubt, stress, and rumination but also leads to self-abandonment. Join her as she shares insights into how the mind can mask trauma with obsession, frustration, and the relentless need to “get it right.” Keep listening to hear how you find the unique somatic soul strategy you need to bring yourself out of overwhelming obsession and into clarity, self-honoring, and groundedness.

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I have to say the right thing or they’ll be mad

Episode Full Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Modern Phoenix podcast. I did not get sick of saying that. I am your inner transformation coach, Gervase Kolmos, and I am here to help you know what you want, know who you are, and choose it out there in the modern world despite the many obstacles—and there will be many—from people to life challenges to the things that come from within ourselves, like our limiting beliefs and our trauma, etc. Today, we're going to talk about one of those things. I'm going to walk you through a presenting belief that came up recently. Somebody booked a Soul Shift Intensive, and as I was listening to her share the story of what was happening, why she felt really stuck and overwhelmed and confused and unable to move forward, what I started to pull out was this core belief she was carrying through the conversation: I have to do the right thing or they're going to be mad.

You don't even need to know the details to relate to this. How many of you have felt or thought: I have to say or do the right thing or they will be mad? We have so much pressure and conditioning that tells women—and only women—there is a right way to behave to get the things we want. There is a right way to belong, to succeed in the workplace, and especially in our families of origin if we are parents. None of this stuff comes for dads. It's really just so much messaging and conditioning toward women that there is a right way to do “womaning,” and there is a wrong way.

Once we identified this belief in this client—that it was the lens through which she was seeing her options and her challenge, “I have to say the right thing or they will be mad”—we tapped a layer deeper. Of course, if you're not new here, you know the next place we go is the body. What's happening in our systems? This feels like activation. I know that I am working with a limiting belief and, in her case, a childhood trauma, because it feels like tightness, stress, anxiety. It feels uncomfortable in my body. It doesn't feel like I'm me. It doesn't feel like I'm safe to be me. It doesn't feel like I know who I am or what I want. Raise your hand if you relate to that experience. All of us have this experience. It's so common for women because of all the conditioning that tells us the right and wrong ways to behave and succeed and be included. The result is the felt sensation—the somatic experience—of feeling bad in our bodies.

Now, let's talk about what this looks like. It feels bad, but it looks like total confusion. And often—tell me if you relate to this—I’ve seen a lot of obsession lately. I am not judging. Girl, I have been there. But it's really useful to notice the way the ego masks trauma, the way the mind masks what is clearly a spinning out of our own authentic self into a performing way of womaning that requires us to self-abandon. It creates obsession with contrived, manipulative solutions: if I do it just like this and say that, I’ll show them, I’ll prove it. It's obsessive. One thing I'll say: women, we know how to obsess. It helps us in so many ways. And also, when you find yourself in this obsessive pattern of thought, you already know: okay, I'm in a limiting belief. I feel the activation. It's showing up as obsession, resentment, anger—solutions that are totally not soulful. I’m thinking of strategies that are contrived by the mind. Okay, I need to stop and drop. I need to stop what I’m doing, drop into my body and soul wisdom, stop obsessing and ruminating, stop thinking my way through this, and drop into a somatic and soul strategy.

So I asked this client: is it true that they may be mad either way? Is it true that these people—or this person—may be disappointed or upset no matter what you choose next? Maybe they're already mad and disappointed. Maybe no matter what you choose, you unconsciously know it's an uphill battle and it will never be enough. Raise your hand if you have that person, that relationship in your life, and you’ve been unwilling to see the truth of the situation—which is not to make it bad or wrong. Relationships are complicated and complex. But when we can get really honest and go, “Oh, it will never be enough. I could never say the perfect right thing for this person to love and accept me and see me for who I truly am,” that can be heavy, hard news to the weary soul trying so hard to be loved, to do it right, to be accepted, to make someone proud, to get validation, to do a good job. And it can be liberating.

The reframe for her was coming back to the It's All Me framework and asking: if they're going to be mad either way, if we knew it would never be enough, and if we held the complex reality that that's not okay and also it's okay—it's not okay, it doesn't feel okay, and also we're okay, we’re holding ourselves through this one and not abandoning ourselves just because somebody else is upset—then what feels right to you? What feels most like your truth to bring to this relationship, this hard conversation, or this next choice?

Suddenly the world shifts and everything that was upside down goes right side up. For this client, there was sudden clarity. Instead of outside-in strategizing, she started leading with her soul, body, and heart. Okay, what feels good to me? Well, I'm not going to go to that thing. I'm not going to call and do that thing. I'm going to choose what feels right for me. And I'm going to give myself permission for that to change. What feels right for me today may change tomorrow. This choice doesn't have to be the final choice of all choices. We love to do that when we're operating from the mind, but the soul understands the complexity of human relating—the web of dynamics involved between families, loved ones, and professional relationships—and gives us space for it to be messy and ever-evolving. Which we love, because we are phoenixes.

So: what feels right for me in this breath? What feels right for me in the next one? If I’m reframing to focus on myself—it's all me—what do I need? What feels safe for me? Then suddenly we’re likely to have not big, sweeping solutions, but the next right thing. We’ll know what to choose for that one little problem. We drop from rumination into embodied next steps. That feels empowering, good, honest—and it gets to feel a little messy too. It's uncertain because, instead of clinging to the old lie we’ve sometimes held since childhood—that if I say or do the right thing, they will love and accept me and they won’t be mad—we’re holding the truth of our relationship, which is: sometimes I’m not sure. It might be messy. I don’t know what they’re going to do. There’s a lot of uncertainty. I feel a little afraid. And also, at least I know what is true for me, what to do for me, what feels good for me, and what my safety line is. I’m going to focus on that.

Then, for this client—and always for my clients—the way we anchor that in and validate that it’s the right somatic and soul strategy is we check the system. We check the body. What does it feel like? Suddenly it moves from obsessive stress, anxiety, and rumination into calm, groundedness, relief, spaciousness, clarity, self-honoring—a breath. And there you have it. That is your soul shift. That is the way you take the work, know who you are and what’s right for you, and make a choice that is not perfect and not guaranteed—because guess what? Nothing in life, nothing in relationships is. It’s you and a whole other being with all their stuff.

As much as we create this worldview and survival strategy of making the “right” choices and saying the “right” thing so they won’t be mad, that strategy expires at a certain point of maturity. When we move from maiden to mother in the archetypal cycles, the strategies that really served us in childhood or maidenhood just don't cut it anymore. They feel like self-abandonment and anxiety. When we can hold what’s right for us within the larger web of uncertainty that is our humanity, at the very least we feel clear and sovereign. We feel like we know what we know and what to choose next. It also takes some pressure off, because wouldn’t it be nice to have a little less pressure on ourselves as modern women to do or say the right thing—and to just be ourselves? The truth is, there is no right or wrong. There’s your system and what you’re experiencing, and there’s theirs.

When we shift from focusing on them—pleasing them, not disappointing them—to ourselves—pleasing ourselves, not disappointing ourselves—and notice what that feels like in our bodies, and feel that validation, we also feel coherence, satisfaction, wholeness. It’s like, “Oh, thank you for being there for me. Thank you for honoring what we need, what’s right for us, that we are a mind, body, and soul.” You can just do that over and over and over. And I hope you do.

I love you so much. If you want to take this work deeper, your first step is to book a Soul Shift Intensive—a 90-minute one-on-one session with me where we will workshop your somatic and soul strategy for whatever triggers are happening in your life. If you love this podcast, I would be so grateful if you’d rate and review us on iTunes, subscribe, and share this with a fellow Phoenix. It really helps us get this message out to modern women everywhere: to blaze their own trail, to know who they are and what they want, and to choose it—even when it feels messy. Reclaim your ownership over your life, the wisdom of your body and soul, and the distinct pleasure that comes from choosing yourself and creating a life from that place of sustained self-trust. I love you so much. I’ll see you back here in two weeks for our next episode. Mwah!

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It’s not okay for me to make mistakes

This week, Gervase takes on a limiting belief that surfaces in the lives of many modern women: it’s not okay to be wrong. Learn why this belief leads to fear, power struggles and a lack of authenticity in your life. You’ll discover why ruminating and gaslighting are trauma-based activation responses, and how leaning into body wisdom and the practice of resourcing can give you exactly what you need - the permission to be human, which will power a sense of ease, flow and creativity in your life.

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Get your free Season of Pleasure masterclass here:

• https://www.gervasekolmos.com/season-of-pleasure

Ready to work with Gervase? Start your rebirth with a Soul Shift:

• Check it out here: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

It’s not okay for me to make mistakes

Episode Full Transcript

Welcome back to the Modern Phoenix Podcast. I am your inner transformation coach, Gervase Kolmos, and we are going to talk about another limiting belief today with the intention, on this podcast and in my world, to help you know who you are, what you want, and choose it out there in the very messy, confusing modern world.

Leading from a client story, as I love to do, let's talk about the belief that it's not okay for me to be wrong. This can also look like it's not okay for me to make mistakes, but we’re going to lead with “it's not okay for me to be wrong.” Raise your hand if you have times in your life or relationships where you notice this comes up—where no matter what the scenario is, when you're talking to a certain type of person (or maybe it's the same person), something rises inside you. For me, I noticed this in my marriage several years ago. Something would come up within me in this specific relationship. We know that our romantic partnerships are our most potent relationships for healing, for mirroring our rejections and childhood wounds, and healing those things. Without knowing the whole story, it makes perfect sense to me that in my relationship it didn’t feel safe for me to be wrong.

For you, this may look like: in all professional relationships it’s not okay for me to be wrong. Or in parenting it’s not okay for me to be wrong. Or because I’m the oldest of seven it’s not okay for me to be wrong. Take it and try it on in whatever way makes sense.

For the client conversation I had recently, she was having a professional dilemma with a colleague who was expressing frustration, disappointment, or dissatisfaction with her professional delivery of services. So now we’ve set the stage: we’re talking about how it’s not okay for me to be wrong. You can see how this woman felt it was absolutely not acceptable in this professional relationship to make a mistake. There was money involved, her résumé, her reputation, and an intimate relationship—she knew this person on a different level too. It makes perfect logical sense, from the mind’s top layer, why she would move into this triggering situation with the belief “it’s not okay for me to make mistakes, it’s not okay for me to be wrong.”

Let’s go into how this presented for her, what it felt like in her body. As we started working through this (over a few days, on Voxer and in my Phoenix Revolution group for alumni and private coaching clients), we noticed it felt like pressure in her system—total siloing of her perspective and focus. She couldn’t even really tap into her body because she was so activated. She was in a fight response, which is not surprising. “It’s not okay for me to make mistakes. It’s not okay for me to be wrong. I’m angry. I’m here to fight. I’m here to fight for my title. I am good enough to do this job. I am a good service provider.”

She felt pressure to fix the situation, an activation response like a fight. She also had this overwhelming “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right.” I kept hearing that theme in our conversations. It looked a lot like obsession and rumination—that pattern we’ve talked about before on this podcast. When the ego is driving the ship, the mind is in survival mode, we’re in an activation response. We’re not getting clarity or magical sovereign Phoenix solutions. We’re just trying to prove, defend, and be perfect—not make mistakes.

What ultimately led to her shifting this activation response was stopping and dropping—as I like to say. Stop ruminating, stop obsessing, stop spiraling down into the mind’s vortex of jibber-jabber, and drop into your somatic and soul strategy. Into the body wisdom. Into the heart. “What is the heart feeling?” I finally challenged her: “What if it was okay for you to be wrong? What if it was okay for you to make a mistake? What if it was okay that you asked for a little bit more money than you felt you deserved on this project?”

Pulling in the radical idea that it is perfectly acceptable and reasonable for you to be a human in business. I know all the entrepreneurs listening just dropped dead. Take a breath. Yes—you, even if you run your own business and everything relies on you and your paycheck and your ability to be the breadwinner and provide—it is okay for you to bring your humanity into your business. Unfortunately, whether you work in a corporate office or you’re an entrepreneur, you are a human, not a robot. The only thing that doesn’t make mistakes is a calculator. Are you a calculator? I hope not. If calculators are listening to this episode, it’s the end of the world indeed.

It never really occurs to us to give ourselves permission to mess up because we think it will be cavalier and lead to a slippery slope of catastrophic self-destruction. A lot of that comes from the conditioning of women throughout time, particularly religious conditioning that tells a woman: don’t you dare step out of line; don’t you dare ask for more than you “deserve” (a totally arbitrary concept and number). Who is deciding what you deserve if not you? Don’t you dare show up unless you’re perfect—unless you’re certain you can be the most manicured, professional, of-serviced version of you. Men don’t have this conditioning. This is a lot of pressure for women.

This pressure causes us to deny ourselves our humanity. Because guess what? It is okay for you to be wrong. It’s okay for you to make mistakes. I’d go as far as to say it’s not just okay, it’s inevitable. Whether you’re a service provider, CEO, exec, parent, family member, or friend, you are going to mess it up—because this is part of human dynamics, part of the experience of being in relationship and showing up for life even though you’re never fully ready. You’re never a polished product. There are no guarantees.

When I brought in awareness of her conditioning and trauma response—the rumination, the spiraling, the spinning out of “it’s not okay for me to be wrong”—and added “what if you were wrong, what if you made a mistake, how do we tend to that reality?” we weren’t saying “take full ownership, it’s all your fault.” Nothing between two humans is ever all one person’s fault—rarely. We leave room for discernment and nuance. Notice how often, especially in current culture, we make things either-or. The truth is they’re always both-and. We don’t need to take full responsibility for everything. And also, what happens to our system when we consider our humanity and say, “Okay, what if I did make a little mistake? What could I have done better here, if I’m being honest and wasn’t so afraid of what it would mean about me?”

So then we brought in her inner parent as a resource—tending to that part of her that’s so afraid, like the little nine-year-old self saying, “Hell no, I didn’t cheat on that test!” I’m just giving one silly example, but there are many good reasons we developed these worldviews. In addition to conditioning, there’s lived experience, sometimes childhood trauma, sometimes just the pressure we feel in society to be one way instead of a multidimensional, ever-evolving human learning as we go.

Bringing in that inner parent as a resource was a breakthrough for her. Also, holding just a little space—having that inner parent hold space for the part that’s true that maybe she messed up a little bit. Maybe it wasn’t the most perfect of all perfect performances—without needing to get into her details because they don’t matter; you can apply this your way.

If you have trouble seeing the roles you’ve played, that’s okay. It’s not about gaslighting yourself into taking full blame for everything. Everybody approaches this differently. One person may gaslight themselves, another may be unwilling to see their blind spots. It’s all messy and ever-changing and confusing. If it feels that way as you’re listening, that’s normal. Because guess what? I’m not going to give you some BS three-step template that works every time. It’s not. Sometimes your childhood trauma is triggered. Sometimes your conditioning is triggered. Sometimes you’re just on your period. Sometimes it’s because you’re breastfeeding and haven’t slept in a year. Sometimes it’s something in the relationship itself requiring serious discernment. Sometimes it doesn’t.

That is why coaching is custom responsiveness to your system. But for this episode, these are things that helped shift her mindset and her relationship to the situation—helped her stop and drop out of the ruminating mind into her body, into her soul wisdom, into the intention in her heart, and to just take some of the pressure off. As soon as she took her breath and held space for the inner parent, her humanity, and the both-and perspective—“yeah, I could have done a really great job on this project and maybe there were a couple things I could have done better”—suddenly it felt like all the pressure was released. Suddenly my system feels loosey-goosey. I don’t feel activated anymore because I have permission to be human. Pressure released. I know I’m in the right space because I can check in with my somatic experience and it’s loose and relaxed.

Okay. Now I know that I’m collaborating. I’m not just letting my mind, ego, and fight response run the show. I’m collaborating mind, body, and soul. It all plays a part. Her takeaway became, “Oh, the intention in my heart is I’m trying. I desire to give this client the best possible outcome that I can. And the reality is there are no guarantees it’s going to be perfectly to their standards. There are no guarantees I won’t make a mistake. There are no guarantees they’re going to love it. But I’m doing my best and I’m a human. I get to hold space for the both-and. I’m holding myself to exceptional expectations professionally and also holding space for my humanity and my intention to be good enough. I’m here. I’m showing up. This feels a little messy. We’re not quite seeing eye to eye. I’m still here. We’re going to see this through.”

Instead of focusing on proving “I’m right” and “I didn’t make a mistake” (which leaves the other person feeling that power struggle and pushing back, keeping you in that chaotic, stressful, dissatisfying dynamic lacking human connection), we’re going to try something new. We’re going to drop into the new paradigm—the Phoenix way of conflict resolution, professionalism, and relating—which does not give me permission to not deliver what you paid me for. It does not give me a full pass to do a horrible job or not show up. But it does hold space for the fact that I’m not a calculator. I’m a human.

Just because someone thinks I made a mistake or feels like I’m wrong doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to do the work I do in the world. It doesn’t mean I’m not really good at my job. It doesn’t mean “how dare I start before I was fully ready.” It just means we’re humans in this messy world doing our best. Here we go. The more honest we can get about what it actually looks like to professionally relate—the more I invite professionals out of this sterile, robotic way of problem-solving and collaborating—the more their souls get on board. Creativity flows through them, collaboration, connection—the things women are wired to do so well come online when we have permission, resources, safety, and education about the conditioning that stopped us from doing it before. That gives us the ability to show up as all that we are—multi-dimensional humans with great ideas, gifts, and contributions.

When we feel safe in our bodies and confident to show up for that—even though we may make mistakes, even though sometimes we’ll say something that’s not right—can you imagine how much we could accomplish? Like I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve been navigating this in my marriage for years. I’ve noticed what’s happened as I’ve made it safer and safer for me to be wrong in my marriage: the deeper and deeper intimacy, love, and connection my husband and I have. This is the new paradigm of partnership. This is where it’s at.

So take this and apply it to whatever area of your life feels most relevant. Know that you’re doing a great job and your intention to try, your being here to learn how to integrate your mind, body, and soul onto the same path—that’s everything. I’m so grateful to have you in this community. I’d be so grateful if you share this podcast with other women so we can grow and create a movement of women who know who they are, what they want, and feel safe and resourced to choose that out there in the modern world.

If you want to take this work deeper, your first step is to book a 90-minute Soul Shift Intensive with me. I will see you back here in two weeks. I love you so much.

Meet The Modern Phoenix

Welcome to the Modern Phoenix Podcast! Born from the ashes of the “It’s All Me” podcast, The Modern Phoenix is here to guide, inspire, and empower you to rise into the truest, most powerful version of yourself. In this episode, Gervase shares the heart behind the podcast rebrand, what it means to be a “modern woman,” and how the Phoenix archetype offers a powerful guide for personal evolution. Keep listening to hear how knowing and choosing yourself despite our social conditioning, trusting your inner wisdom, and making bold choices are key to becoming who you were meant to be.

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Get your free Season of Pleasure masterclass here:

• https://www.gervasekolmos.com/season-of-pleasure

Ready to work with Gervase? Start your rebirth with a Soul Shift:

• Check it out here: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

Who Is The Modern Phoenix?

Episode Full Transcript

Hi friends. Welcome to the Modern Phoenix Podcast.

This is a new and improved podcast, born from the ashes of the It’s All Me podcast. I am Gervase Kolmos—Inner Transformation Coach, Modern Woman, Phoenix, mama of three, human, paradox.

Today’s episode is going to share what this podcast is all about—how it will guide you to know and choose what you want in your life. I’ll also share why it’s called The Modern Phoenix, who the Modern Phoenix is, and how I believe this archetype can help you become the version of yourself your soul is asking you to be, the version your body is asking you to free.

So let’s get into it.

This podcast is a complete education in knowing and choosing. Knowing your wants and your needs, guided by the wisdom of your mind, body, and soul. And choosing them—despite expectations, conditioning, and constraints. Because those will always be there. As I like to say in my world: life is going to keep “life-ing.”

I was talking with a client today, and she said she’s tuning into the best version of herself. She feels that version positively impacts everyone she connects with. But she also realized that the “best version” of her is very different from who she was conditioned to believe she was supposed to be.

So let’s dive into what it means to be a modern woman.

For many of us who identify as women, the “best version” has always been defined by external standards: the most accomplished, successful, rich, beautiful, likable, popular, the one who pleases others. Many women now are untangling patterns of people-pleasing and self-abandonment—ways of “womaning” we were taught were required to be our best.

But what we’ve realized, thanks to the tools and access we have as modern women, is that this “best version” may have been more palatable for those around us, but it wasn’t serving our communities at the highest level. Because it cost us too much to deny our true, full, imperfect, evolving selves.

To be a modern woman is to face unique challenges born from the conditioning of generations before us and the culture our mothers, grandmothers, and ancestors were born into. They were taught: here’s how to be the best version of yourself. Here’s how to be a good woman.

But because we are modern, we have unprecedented opportunity to choose differently. We have the privilege, safety, and access to make choices our mothers couldn’t. Not only do we have more rights, but also more information, technology, and connection points to people all over the world. This creates both awakening and overwhelm.

Because at the same time, modern life bombards us with demands. Never before have women faced so many expectations. We’re told how to be the best mothers, the healthiest humans, the most “woke” activists, the kindest partners, the sexiest lovers. It’s paralyzing. Whether you’re working in the home, in the workplace, partnered, or single—social media and cultural conditioning make it confusing and overwhelming to know who you really are, what you want, and to feel safe enough to choose it.

Women often come into my world asking: Why do I do this? Why do I feel this way? Why do I think this way? The why is actually pretty simple: our conditioning. Internalized patriarchy, capitalism, religion, white supremacy—systems that shape our nervous systems, minds, patterns, and beliefs. It’s no wonder it feels hard to know and choose when the conditioning is so strong.

I am not here to make anything about you—or the world—better or wrong. I am here to help you see the unseen. To name the obstacles keeping you from self-trust and freedom. To help you tune into your intuition, your inner wisdom, and create your life from a place of embodied self-trust, wisdom, and pleasure.

I weave together modalities that work with the mind, body, and soul. I am certified in focalizing—a trauma-informed somatic practice for nervous system regulation. I also use hypnotherapy, which works with subconscious beliefs and reprogramming the mind, alongside my certification in coaching. Blended with my lived experience as a modern woman, these are the tools that help you harness your superpower: knowing who you are, what you want, and choosing it.

So let’s talk about what it means to be a Phoenix.

The Phoenix embodies everything about doing the work without being stuck in our past, our trauma, or our stories. It teaches us to transmute and alchemize all of our pain, suffering, and experience into something powerful. Not by bypassing the hard stuff, but by honoring both light and dark, joy and storm.

The Phoenix evolves endlessly, honoring cycles of death and rebirth. Just as seasons shift, old parts of us must fall away so that new growth can emerge. To stay stuck in outdated identities or a traumatized nervous system is far less healthy than allowing ourselves to be reborn again and again.

To embody the Phoenix is to bravely choose. To lean into the fire, trusting that we have the tools to rise. Sometimes we need support. Sometimes it’s our first initiation. But always, the Phoenix archetype reminds us that courage, rebirth, and rising are possible.

For me, the Phoenix also carries deeply feminine energy. Fire is messy, flowy, and powerful without form. It reminds us that our feminine nature—often suppressed by the pace and demands of modern life—is sacred. And it invites us to live as all of it: light and dark, feminine and masculine, mind, body, and soul.

This has been my own journey. I am not teaching from a pedestal. I have walked through my own Phoenix fires countless times. That’s why I am passionate about guiding women through theirs.

This podcast used to be called It’s All Me, because so much of my journey was about claiming sovereignty. Over time, I realized that what truly empowered me was seeing myself as a Phoenix—constantly evolving, dying, and being reborn.

So I rebranded this podcast as a home for my fellow Phoenixes—for cycle breakers, soulful seekers, high achievers, mothers, and dreamers who feel like something is missing or out of alignment. The Modern Phoenix isn’t about titles, income, or roles. It’s about your essence, your truth, and your courage to evolve.

Here, you’ll find deep and twisty conversations and solo episodes that burn away conditioning and invite you to step into your most authentic self. You’ll get tools, mindsets, and resources to help you untangle who you really are from who you were told to be. And you’ll be given full permission to evolve as many times as necessary.

Thank you for being here. Let’s rise.